Memorial Day 2010
We went to the Memorial Day Parade in downtown Milwaukee to honor the veterans, and support the Dryhootch Veterans Group. We had a great day talking to the veterans and selling coffee to support the Dryhootch program, which helps welcome home our veterans. The photographer got a picture of my husband watching me watch the parade. My Hubbin is so good to me!!
May He bless your friends …
May He bless your friends with the peace you bring to me.
If life is but a dream…
If life is but a dream, then may I never wake up as long as you are in it.
Prayer: May it always be so
Wife to Hubbin: I love you.
Hubbin to Wife: May it always be so.
You gotta see the work of Tammy Rae Johnson!
If you love lampwork glass, you gotta see the work of my friend, Tammy Johnson at her website www.tammyrae.com.
She makes amazing lampwork glass. I love her new capped beads – large hole lampwork beads with sterling silver or copper caps on each side of the hole. Put one on a chain for a dramatic necklace. Hold the glory of art in your fingers.
Color Pix – a tool that lets you identify the colors that you see on your computer.
Color Pix in Action – I love BLUE #0000ff!
Color Pix: The color picker tool that I keep coming back to, (and I try a lot of them) is Color Pix. It is a little eyedropper that you can hover over anything on your screen, and find out what color it is!
- It tells you the color values that different color formats use to describe it.
- It tells me where I am on the screen: 136x 272 means 136 pixels over from the left and 272 pixels down from the top.
- It has a built-in magnifier, so that you can zoom in on the exact pixel you want. The zoom goes from 1-2800%, so you can get just the one you want.
- You can click on the value of the color and it copies the numbers right to your clipboard so you can use them in a different application.
- You can even make it stay on top of the other applications, and out of your way.
- Best of all, it is FREE! There are no ads or spyware or toolbars – just a nice tool provided by Color Schemer. They have other nice tools available on their site – like a nice color scheme maker, and I return there often to use their other tools.
Color Values
ColorPix gives you four sets of color numbers:
- RGB: it tells you the amount of red, green and blue in the format as three numbers. They range from 0-255 for each number.
- Hex: This is a hexidecimal code that was developed to identify colors. It tells you the amount of red, green and blue as six digits, from 0-9 and A-F.
- HSB: This code tells you the hue, saturation and brightness for each color. It is coded according to its hue (0-360), the percent of saturation (color vs black), and its percent of brightness.
- CYMK: These four numbers are especially important to commercial printers. The ink is put on the paper in precise combinations of Cyan (aqua blue), Yellow, Magenta, and Black.
Why are the color values important? Let me give you a simple example. The screenshot above is taken from the Beadtrotters website. When we first decided that our logo was going to be four crystal beads in each of our favorite colors, we knew immediately how to identify them to each other. We gave each other the names of our favorite Swarovski crystals, and instantly each of us knew what color that was. Swarovski crystals are only made by one company and the colors are remarkably consistent. But, we didn’t know exactly what color that was when printed on a piece of paper or a displayed on a website.
So I sent them to the Visibone Color Lab. There is a color wheel with the 216 primary colors that are used on websites, all nicely arranged and labeled. I said click on the colors, see which one is closest to your favorite color and send me the big six-digit code that pops up. Then, it will be consistent in all of our printed materials and our website.
So here is a list of the Beadtrotter’s official colors, as expressed in Swarovski Crystal and Hex Codes.
Beadtrotters Logo: Sue, Judy, Cindy, Paulette
- Sue Stachelski loves FUSCHIA – hex #cc0066
- Judy Menting (me) loves COBALT – hex #0000ff
- Cindy Collins loves FIRE OPAL – hex#ff6600
- Paulette Biedenbender loves BLUE ZIRCON – hex #33ccff
Next time – I will talk more about the different color values.
My Favorite Color Sites – Part Two
In searching the web, I have found some beautiful and useful sites that helped me understand how color works and how to tell my computer to give me that exact color. In my previous post, I listed some sites that help you learn about the physical characteristics of color.
Next, I want to introduce you to some artists who can teach you about how to use color in your beadwork.
Artists Teaching About the Use of Color
Margie Deeb is a skilled graphic artist who is also a very skilled beader, whose primary love is working in seedbeads. Her website is full of articles about using color in your beadwork. She has written two wonderful books, has a monthly article, and has absolutely beautiful beadwork for sale on her site. I highly recommend getting on her mailing list. My favorite links are her site are:
Connie Fox is a beader who loves to use wire. She is famous for her wire bangles that incorporate twisted wire and beads to create wonderful jewelry. She has a great visual tour of her own jewelry studio, lots of free videos to help you make better jewelry, and some very cool color tools for you. My favorite links on her site are:
Joen Wolfram is a quilter, but her book, Color Play, is totally relevant to beading and web design. She explains the color wheel, how it works, and shows you examples of color combinations using quilt designs. The beauty of it is that she shows you how to combine colors by using photos from nature transformed into beautiful quilts, along with guidelines to actually achieve the effects you are looking for in your creations.
Be sure to get the excellent color tool that she has developed. It is like the color swatches you get at a paint store, but on the back of each swatch are tips for combining those colors in the most effective way. If you are having trouble finding it the color tool, go to Connie Fox’s site.
- The book: Color Play
- The color tool: 3-in-1 Color Tool
These are three of my favorite color artists. In my next post – I will give you some of my favorite online color tools for creating color schemes.
My Favorite Color Sites – Part One
To me, one of the most interesting things about beading and websites is how they use color. When I first began designing websites, I realized that all ‘blue’s are not created equal. I was overjoyed to find out that some the colors on the web had codes to tell the computer that I a certain blue.
In searching the web, I have found some beautiful and useful sites that helped me understand how color works and how to tell my computer to give me that exact color.
Learn about the physical characteristics of color:
- Real Color Wheel: Learn about color from a painter. Colors mix differently in physical pigments than they do with light. Don Jusko has made extensive studies of the physical properties of paint, and then translated the paint colors into the codes we use on our computers.
- Handprint: Learn about color and color theory from another painter, Bruce MacEvoy. His extensive website is a comprehensive resource for watercolor painters, papers, brushes, color theory, painting techniques, and more.
- Color Schemer – This color scheme maker is based on the the color theories of Johannes Itten – one of the founding fathers of color theory.
Next Post: My Favorite Color Sites – Part Two
HILUW: Hubbin I Love You Wife
WILUH: Wife I Love You Hubbin
Design Tools
Toggle bracelet: This bracelet is one of the design tools I wear when meeting with clients. It is a heavy sterling cuff bracelet with removable ends, filled with furnace glass and my favorite toggles. The bar is attached to the toggle with a letter bead in a wrapped loop link, so that you can identify it easily, and get exactly the toggle you like!
This piece was created for an art show at a local church. One of the four themes is: What does heaven look like? I picked verses from Revelations 21 for my inspiration.
“He showed me the holy city, the new Jerusalem. It had a great, high wall with twelve gates, and at the gates twelve angels. … The the foundations of the wall were of precious gemstones and the gates of pearl.”
Over 150 hours of beading and prayer went into this pin. The angel is made of 24k gold-lined opal glass seed beads, edged with Swarovski crystal. Her face is a single creamy freshwater pearl.
The foundation wall is of sapphire-colored seed beads, and the gate is pearly and gold seed beads, and Swarovski crystal. The arch is the same 24k gold-lined beads as the angel, but fashioned into beaded beads and stitched into an imposing arch.
The pin is wrapped with beaded gold wire, and decorated with a removable beaded bead.
Come and Drink at the River of Life Without Price - Bookmark
This bookmark was created for an art show at a local church. The overall theme is “Heaven”, and this was created to show what are the activities in heaven.
“Come and drink at the river of the water of life that cascades from the throne of God”, down the middle of the 24k gold-lined beaded streets of the city.
“COME” is written in garnet-lined beads, symbolizing the blood of the Lamb who paid with His life so that you can drink without price. And once you drink the water of life, the gold-filled chains of sin and death are broken.
The word “bead” come from the Old English word for “prayer”. This bookmark is 16 hours of hand sewn prayers, so that your Bible becomes “the water of life” for you.
Rev 22: 1, 2, 17
Do you worry?
Do you worry?
One of the things that my husband and I do when there are things that we could worry about, but choose not to, is to ask God to send an angel to walk with us. The Bible clearly says that there are angels, and that they are messengers from God. It helps me to “quiet down” when I think of a great big angel standing next to me. Here’s the scenario I use to help me interrupt the worry process.
The bigger the concern is, the bigger I make the angel. I’ve made it tall enough to touch the sky, in my mind. Then I take my worry, put it in a box, and give it to the angel so that he/she can carry it for me. If my worry still looks big, I make the angel bigger until it looks small enough for the worry to fit it in the palm of his hand. The thing is, once I give the worry to the angel to carry, I can’t get it back, so I have to really be ready to give it up. In exchange, the angel gives me a message from God. Sometimes, it jumps right into my head, like it was on a piece of paper. Sometimes I have to listen for it all day. And sometimes, just having the angel there is enough.
I know this sounds kinda odd, but it is not at all based on new age philosophy or odd ball stuff. It just helps me make an image in my mind to help me stop the process of worrying, because I have an easier time imagining what an angel looks like than what God looks like. This process, for me, is to make me quit playing with the worry in my mind. I’m not praying to the angel, I’m not replacing God with the angel, the process is a tool to make my mind stop whirling.
My favorite morning prayer from my hubbin to me.
